With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.
I enjoy paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.
April 26, 2008 - 6:29 p.m.
Time to write today’s entry. Yesterday was photography day. I started on my project of photographing the neighborhood. I walked down Springfield Blvd then up Northern Blvd to the Alley Pond Environmental Center. Let’s see how far that is. According to google maps 1.2 miles. I walked the trails there too so I probably walked around 3 miles. On the way there I ran into one of my officemate. I knew he lived in the area but I never ran into him before. We walked a few blocks together. This is bad. I’m totally blanking on his name. He is such a nice guy too. This isn’t the one that I try to avoid talking to. He has a strong Chinese accent and it is sometimes hard to make out what he is saying but it is worth the effort.
Have you noticed how good I’ve been? I’ve been walking at least two miles every day. I’ll do so as long as the weather holds up. As a matter of fact I’m going for a walk as soon as I finish this entry. I was watching the Met game before. They actually won. Everyone is panicking because they’ve been losing lately and their record went down to 11-11. It is early the in season. Things will work out.
Last night I went to see Christine Lavin. I wasn’t in Deepest Darkest New Jersey, just Deep Dark NJ aka Wayne. I didn’t see the fountains. It was at William Patterson University.
The signs at the school were terrible. When you enter the campus there isn’t a campus map or a single sign saying where things are. I had to drive around till I found somebody walking and ask them where the Shea Center was. How can you have a public venue and not have anything directing the public to where it is? Perhaps that is part of the reason the crowd was so small. The entire show was not organized well. This show was not general admission, I had an assigned seat, B 105. Nowhere on the ticket did it say which side to enter on. When I asked I was told either side. The usher just told me to go to row B. I got there and saw that seat 130 or so was on the end so I needed to be on the opposite side of the auditorium. I had to walk to the back and all around. Now isn’t telling me where my seat is the entire purpose of having ushers? I think I could have figured out that Row B was the second row on my own.
When I got to my seat I saw all the seats on the end were taken. I asked stood there looking and asked the person around the fifth seat what number she had. She didn’t answer but the guy two away from her got up and saw it was 103. I told the woman in the fifth seat that she was in my seat. She then got up and went back a row. She knew she was in the wrong seat. As soon as I came over she should have gotten up and let me sit down. When I started asking she certainly should have gotten up. What did she think that I’d give up and move back?
The show itself was a bit unusual. It was not just Chris but also a “on the verge” show. It was a showcase for up and coming performers. None of them particularly impressed me. The format was that Chris’s songs were interspersed with the vergers. I’d have preferred that they were the opening act then Chris did her set straight. Not that I didn’t end up enjoying myself. Chris is always great and had a few new songs. She did the Jeopardy theme just for me.
The important thing when photographing Chris is to get her facial expressions, they are half the show.
Here is a photo of the paint peeling off the piano. Do you see the face in white with the huge forehead? Now do also see the head in profile in black? It looks like Mom from Futurama.
Here is the complete slideshow of Chris and the vergers.
I started to take a video of her baton twirling but the battery of my camera died a short way into it. I could post what I had but I’ll just wait to the next time I see her to record the whole thing.
After the show I of course went to talk to her. She offered me a ride back to the City. She always forgets that I drive even though she remembers exactly how much money I won on Jeopardy. I’ve even offered her rides to and from shows.
I gave her a copy of Iain Campbell Smith’s new album. She is one of the greatest champions of new talent in the folk world. Zoë Lewis was just telling me how helpful she’s been.
On the way home I needed to stop and get gas. I always like buying it in Jersey where it is cheaper. The problem is that there are no stations on Route 80, the main road I took and I didn’t pass any on the way from the campus to it. I got off the next exit and looked. I found a Dunkin’ Donuts and asked where there was a station. It wasn’t far away but because there are no left turns in Jersey I had to drive over a mile to get back to the highway.
The Jersey highways annoyed me again when I neared the George Washington Bridge. There is a point where the traffic divides into to roads, one is express to the Bridge’s upper level and the other is local to the Lower Level (or so the signs say). I chose the express to the Upper Level. The split is miles before the bridge. After driving a few miles I see the traffic ahead of me is coming to a halt. There is then a sign on the local lanes saying, “Major delays due to construction on the upper level all cars take the lower level. Why wasn’t there a sign like that when I still had options on which way to go? I felt the stupidity of that gave me the right to do something I never do. I crossed over to the local lanes through a gap that said, “Do not enter.” Many other cars were doing the same thing. I easily saved myself a half an hour of waiting at a standstill.
A little after I said that I was going for a walk after I wrote this my phone rang, it was Lena. We ended up talking so long that I don’t have time for the walk now. That’s a shame. I really wanted to take it. Well I’ll take a shorter walk while my potato is in the oven. I’ll bring my camera and take more pictures of the neighborhood.
The International Jewish Banking Conspiracy - October 07, 2008
On the Road to Westchester County - October 06, 2008
Inside the Madison Square Studio - October 05, 2008
I'm a Bosniac and I'm debating like I've never debated before - October 03, 2008
Islands in the Stream of Consciousness - October 02, 2008
Email me: GordonLew at gmail
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Horvendile April 26, 2008
